


Comfort Food

by Notawiseacre



Series: Vampire AU [7]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alfred Pennyworth is the Best, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Baking, Comfort Food, Cooking with Blood (Because Vampires), Gen, Good Grandparent Alfred Pennyworth, Good Parent Alfred Pennyworth, POV Alfred Pennyworth, Protective Alfred Pennyworth, Vampire Jason Todd, Vampire Tim Drake, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29740830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notawiseacre/pseuds/Notawiseacre
Summary: Alfred believes in the importance of food.  With vampires in the family, he has to adapt, and he’s up to the challenge. Now, after Tim’s traumatic turning and rescue, Alfred resolves to bring comfort in one of the best ways he knows: with food.
Relationships: Alfred Pennyworth & Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth & Jason Todd, Batfamily Members & Alfred Pennyworth, Dick Grayson & Alfred Pennyworth, Tim Drake & Alfred Pennyworth
Series: Vampire AU [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2131410
Comments: 7
Kudos: 206





	Comfort Food

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Vampire AU Worldbuilding](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29652333) by [iselsis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iselsis/pseuds/iselsis). 



> FYI: blood does a lot of the same things, and behaves pretty much the same way (solidifying with heat and such), as eggs when you cook with it.

Mr. Alfred Pennyworth, veteran, butler, foster-father, foster-grandfather, and general averter of sundry catastrophes, was an excellent cook.

He had to be. Not only did he have the daunting task of providing balanced and fortified nourishment for a household of very busy vigilantes, but he also had the (significantly more difficult, he often felt) task of actually getting that nourishment into the stomachs of the vigilantes in question. One might think that simply making the food delicious enough would be sufficient.

One would be very, depressingly wrong.

For some members of the family (Master Bruce, most notably, not to mention Master

until recent events, Master Tim), Alfred had to contend with the tendency to entirely forget about food, water, and sleep when in the midst of a case. A banquet for the gods might be offered to them, and they wouldn’t even notice it. Alfred had therefore developed certain stratagems for getting them to eat anyway, even if only by habit (or even by accident).

First, the food must be palatable at all temperatures, from the chill of sitting on a desk in the damp cave for hours on end, to the heat of the sterilizer into which Master Bruce had, due to a mix of preoccupation and lack of sleep, once put an energy bar instead of the intended hemostat. Second, it must have the structural ability to be picked up inattentively in one hand and conveyed successfully to the mouth. Finally, it must not be too spicy or flavorful; Alfred had been informed seriously by

by Master Tim that an unexpectedly delicious mouthful could entirely throw one out of “the zone”, an occurrence to be avoided at all costs.

Alfred had developed many recipes for nutrient-dense, highly portable, nearly indestructible energy bars, which he could pile onto a plate, put on the Batcomputer’s desk, and have decent hope that they would be eaten, even if only by accident. He had considered sharing the recipes with Lucius Fox, to be marketed for marathoners or mountaineers or the like.

He had just as much trouble persuading Miss Stephanie and young Master Richard to eat properly, but for rather different reasons. Neither of them forgot to eat, or attempted to subsist upon nothing but coffee and energy drinks for days on end, the way

the way Master Bruce sometimes did. Instead, they seemed determined to fill themselves with the most horrifyingly nutritionless trash. Given his preference, Master Richard would never eat anything but boxes of sugary cereal and vile prepackaged breakfast “pastries”. Meanwhile Miss Stephanie would be perfectly content to never have anything but waffles upon her plate in perpetuity.

Alfred had developed stratagems for them, too. The key, he had found, was disguise and misdirection: an astonishing amount of nutrition could be smuggled into cookies and sweets, which Master Richard would devour and be none the wiser; one could survive, and carry out nocturnal heroics, indefinitely on nothing but Alfred’s expertly-formulated fruitcake, and never once suppose it might be healthful. Meanwhile, he had found that any number of baked goods, sweet and savory alike, would be eagerly devoured by Miss Stephanie, if only they were cooked by means of the waffle iron.

It was ironic, he supposed, that the family member most interested in the art and craft of food was also the family member who didn’t actually need it. When the scrawny, ragged little vampire child, as fearful as a stray cat that had never received anything from anyone but thrown stones, had first arrived at the Manor, he had never eaten food of any kind in his life. Solid food, human food, was a luxury he had never been able to afford, and certainly had not been able to justify, as it would have given him no nourishment at all. Merely surviving had been all he could manage, and that only just; the empty calories of human food were something it had never even occurred to him to pursue.

Alfred had never cooked for a vampire before. A few of Gotham’s wealthy families were vampires, at least in part, but when they attended galas and banquets, or called at the Manor for brunch, they tended to disdain the prosaic practicality of blood. Nothing said “wealth”, said “conspicuous consumption”, said (in a less literal, but perhaps more apt way) “vampire”, so much as ignoring the blood their bodies needed in favor of the human delicacies that tasted delicious, but had absolutely no nutrition for them whatsoever. A Gotham millionaire vampire would no more drink blood at a gala (no matter how delicately spiced and infused, no matter how elegant the warmed tureen from which it was served) than a human millionaire would eat a cardboard cup of microwaved ramen noodles or a can of off-brand Spam. It was too, too common, too reminiscent of lesser creatures.

It was an unfortunate fact that Alfred quietly loathed most of Master Bruce’s social peers. He had done so for years, even before

not even including the Drakes. The starving stray was worth fifty of them. Was worth all of them put together.

For young Master Jason’s first breakfast at the manor, Alfred had attempted blood cuisine for the first time (apart from his long-abandoned efforts to persuade his family to enjoy black pudding; black pudding was always more British than vampire anyway). Being new to the art, he started with something simple: a blood omelet, and though he knew objectively it was not necessary, he couldn’t resist the impulse to fortify it with chopped bacon and fried potato. When he deftly turned it out, steaming, onto a plate, it looked disconcertingly like a chocolate omelet, and smelled even more disconcertingly like iron and copper. It was nothing a human would be tempted to eat.

But the tiny boy, wearing ill-fitting borrowed pajamas and seeming to want to vanish into them, had stared wide-eyed at the plate of food as if it had been made of solid gold. He swallowed convulsively, over and over, as a human would whose mouth wouldn’t stop watering. He almost seemed afraid, as if he didn’t dare accept something of such dazzling extravagance. It had taken all of Alfred’s patience and coaxing to assure him that it was for him, it was okay for him to eat it, it wasn’t a trick or a trap or some sort of test. And when Master Jason did finally eat the omelet, he enjoyed it so clearly and completely and almost disbelievingly that Alfred decided then and there that he would become an expert at blood cuisine.

None of them had paid very much attention to the availability of blood to poor vampires, until the arrival of Master Jason. But a few days later, Master Bruce had approached Alfred with a new mission.

“The Wayne Foundation supports five food pantries and food banks in the Narrows and the Bowery,” he said.

“I believe that is correct, sir.”

“But it has come to my attention that none of them offer blood bags for vampires. Vampires have to buy surplus or expired stock from blood banks, unless they go to one of the specialty blood shops, and those are out of the reach of people in poverty.”

Alfred paused, the duster stilling in his hand. He had truthfully never really considered the matter. He had known that bagged blood was unhealthy, full of preservatives and anticoagulants. He had known that specialty blood was an expensive luxury product, and that donated blood bank blood was significantly cheaper, but not free. He had known that vampires who stole blood did so at the risk of steep legal penalties, equivalent to aggravated assault (courts, it turned out, had determined fangs to be weapons, and therefore any vampire assault was an armed assault). But he had never really put these facts together into a coherent picture. He thought about how skinny and half-starved poor Master Jason was, and how he had been desperate enough to try to steal _Batman’s_ tires.

“I’ve called a meeting of the Wayne Foundation board. From now on, all our food pantries will offer frozen blood for vampires in need, along with human food. They can offer some sort of incentive, or something, for people to donate. I can buy them stock of that expensive specialty blood, if I need to.” He clenched and unclenched his hands, uncomfortable as always with showing too much of the fierce emotion that boiled in him. “I didn’t _realize_. . .I never _knew_ that there were still people starving in spite of the food pantries, just because they needed something the food pantries didn’t have.” He stared at Alfred, his expression horrified. “How many vampires did I send to prison, when they were just. . .just hungry, and desperate?”

Alfred wasn’t sure how to answer that. The number was probably fairly high, truthfully, and the unvarnished truth was _always_ what Master Bruce wanted, no matter how bad it was; soft prevarications were one of the things he hated most. “You have always done your very best, sir,” Alfred offered, and he knew that was entirely true. “You have never once intentionally gone after anyone who didn’t fully deserve it. There is nothing else you could have done.”

”Intentions don’t matter, Alfred,” he said, passing far harsher judgement on himself than anyone else would. Just as he always did. “Whether I was doing my best _doesn’t matter_. What matters is the fact.” He clenched his hands again, struggling to keep his distress decently under cover. “The Wayne Foundation is going to make more donations to the pro bono law offices too. Large donations.” 

Alfred rested his hand on Master Bruce’s shoulder. “I think that is an excellent idea, sir,” he said. “And. . .you know, now. You have learned. You will do better from now on.”

And he had, too. He still stopped vampire criminals and henchmen—he was still Batman, after all—but he became far more apt to let the less violent of them go with a meal and a warning, rather than hauling them in to the police. He made sure all his businesses were willing to hire vampires. He looked into the foster system for vampire children, and rooted out more corruption and abuse there than even he had expected. It wasn’t _enough_ , it was never _enough_ , but as Alfred repeatedly emphasized, it was always _something_.

Alfred made sure to cook for Master Jason at least once or twice a week. He mastered blood tea, brewing it and then whipping it gradually into the blood, as he would do tempering eggs. He mastered blood custards, soufflés, meringues, hollandaise and mayonnaise sauces, eggnogs, and cloud bread. He explored spicing, infusing, and mulling blood. He worked methodically through an entire cookbook of ice cream recipes, trying each one with blood. He brought out his old black pudding and blood pancake and blood sausage recipes. He and young Master Jason spent many happy hours in the kitchen, and Master Jason had eagerly licked the beaters after making a batch of blood cake or blood chocolate chip cookies, just as any human child would have done.

When the boy had been murdered, it all but destroyed Master Bruce. He spiraled into endless circles of self-blame and what-ifs. He became life-threateningly reckless as Batman, and almost entirely absent from both the Gotham social calendar and from Wayne Enterprises. In the days and weeks after Ethiopia, he often simply refused to eat, unable to stomach it, unable to care enough even to try. Alfred, meanwhile, found it hard to make the effort to try to persuade him. He was firmly of the opinion that food, though necessary for sustenance, should also bring joy, and for Master Jason, it always had. Now the kitchen was deathly quiet, a place of mourning, and it was _wrong_. Without young Master Jason in the house, everything was wrong. Alfred collected all his books and boxes of blood recipes, and pushed them into the back of a cupboard where he would not have to see them. It was weeks before he could bring himself to make anything more than cold sandwiches.

Then, against all hope, against all explanation, Master Jason had returned. He had returned hardened, and haunted, and terribly, terribly hungry, but he had returned. The first time he could be persuaded to come downstairs for lunch with the family, Alfred had pulled out all the stops, baking and roasting and frying and infusing and compounding every one of his favorite dishes.

For Master Jason, food meant safety, and home, and acceptance. After all the privations of his years away (years he still wouldn’t entirely talk about, but which had left him resistant to silver and inured both to hunger and to drinking horrible blood that barely even qualified as blood), Alfred’s cooking meant that those dark times were over. He was safe. He was home.

Now, Alfred was again faced with the reality of a terribly hurt foster grandson. It was different, of course: Master Timothy’s trauma had come at the hands of his own biological father, rather than at the hands of a madman, a fact which enraged and revolted Alfred in equal measure. He had not yet heard all that Master Timothy suffered in the weeks he had been missing, and he knew he might never do so. But when the poor boy had been ushered into the Manor, with his father and brothers (his real ones, never mind biology) clustered around him as if he was as starved for loving touch as for blood, he had been shivering, his newly red-tinged eyes haunted, and moving as if he was trying to make himself as small as he could.

Alfred knew he could trust Master Bruce and his two eldest boys to care for young Master Timothy, and give as much comfort as he would take. In the meantime, Alfred baked and cooked. He took all his blood recipes back out of the cupboard. He mixed Master Timothy’s favorite coffee into blood, baked his favorite chocolate cookies and his favorite meatloaf with blood in them instead of eggs, and, knowing that when not in need of excessive caffeination, Master Timothy was quite fond of chai lattes, he warmed a bag of frozen blood in a hot water bath, then infused it with cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, and cloves.

When Master Timothy, rested and clean and, Alfred strongly suspected, thoroughly hugged, came into the kitchen and tucked into the meal, Alfred hoped that for him, too, food could mean safety, and acceptance, and comfort, and home.

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s some of how I imagine the blood system working.
> 
> The few wealthy vampires can hire personal blood donors as part of their household staff, or they can get their blood frozen from specialty blood shops, which pay donors. This blood is just frozen, without any anticoagulants or preservatives added to it, so it’s a lot healthier and tastier, but also much more expensive and perishable. There are even expensive special blood options, like blood certified to come from a person who just eats spicy food, or who never touches pork products, or who is a vegan.
> 
> Meanwhile, poorer vampires can make arrangements with humans in whatever way (something, or some service, in exchange for blood, or getting blood from a human friend, or whatnot), or they can buy blood bank blood, which is donated by unpaid volunteers and has all the additives in it. It’s a lot cheaper than the specialty stuff, but still expensive if you’re in poverty.


End file.
